What stay-to-play means
A stay-to-play policy, sometimes called stay-and-play or a required housing policy, makes booking through the tournament's lodging programme a condition of the team's registration. Teams that book elsewhere can be charged a penalty fee, lose their place, or be moved down the schedule.
The tournament usually runs the programme through one or more contracted hotels, or hands it to a sports housing company that manages the blocks, the rooming lists and the reporting on its behalf.
Where the money comes from
Behind almost every stay-to-play policy is a rebate or commission. The hotel pays a fixed amount per room night, or a percentage, on rooms picked up inside the tournament's block. A housing company takes its fee from the same pool and passes a share to the tournament.
The policy exists to protect that pickup. A block carries an attrition clause, so if families book cheaper rooms down the road, the tournament loses its rebate and can end up owing the hotel for rooms nobody used. Requiring teams to book inside the block is how a tournament turns an uncertain block into a predictable one.
What it costs the tournament
Families notice. The most common complaint is price: a required hotel is often more expensive than what a family could find on its own, and the difference is easy to attribute to the policy. The second is choice: families that want a rental with a kitchen, or to stay with the team in one house, find the programme does not offer it.
Some teams respond by choosing a different tournament. That is the real cost, and it rarely shows on the lodging report, because the team that did not register never appears in anyone's pickup.
When a required housing policy makes sense
For very large events in towns with limited rooms, a managed programme can genuinely help families: it holds rooms that would otherwise sell out and keeps teams together. The case weakens as the event gets smaller, as the local market gets bigger, and as more families prefer rentals and houses to hotels.
Earning on lodging without requiring it
The alternative is to be the most useful place to book rather than the mandatory one. A tournament that shows real places to stay — hotels, rentals and houses near the fields — on its registration confirmation page reaches every family at the moment the trip becomes real, without a penalty behind it.
A revenue share on those bookings pays the tournament on whatever families choose to book through it, at any property, with no block and no attrition clause to protect. With Bookend that share is around 6–8% of each booking, and the family pays the same rate it would pay anywhere else.
Some tournaments run both: a small block for teams that want the managed option, and an open lodging page for everyone else. The event lodging revenue calculator on this site shows what the open side is worth from your own team counts.